Patristic Theology of the Eucharist

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Patristic theology of the efficacy of the Eucharist 
Introduction 
Christianity is by its nature incarnational and therefore sacramental, and Christian
praxis has from the very beginning been centred around a sacramental celebration
which was experienced as an encounter with Christ.
1
Frances Young summarises the
early Christian experience in this way:
The central act of sacrifice performed by Christians is a fellowship-meal,
through which believers share in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ by
commemoration, a symbolic meal shared in his presence with fellow-believers,
a meal in which the actions of breaking bread and drinking wine enable us to
feed spiritually on his ‘virtue’ and vitality. … The Eucharist is a sacrifice of
worship, praise and thanksgiving … [it] is a sacrifice for sin, [which] realizes in
us God’s act of atonement. … the early Church even thought of it as an
aversion-sacrifice, believing that sharing in the feast kept away the devil and his
angels; … it is a sacrifice with the power to deal with sin and guilt and
reconcile us with God. But primarily, it is a communion-sacrifice which draws
us into fellowship with him and with each other, a meal in which we partake of
his power and receive the strength to continue the battle against evil within
ourselves and in the world around us.
2
Those modern theologians who feel squeamish about acknowledging this fact are
reflecting more recent agendas. As late as the Reformation, a religious genius and
innovator in so many areas such as Luther was still able to uphold the objective reality
and efficacy of the Eucharist over against Zwingli, who in this instance represents
modernity.
3
The reduction of the ‘spiritual’ to the disembodied is a modern
phenomenon, which echoes the dualistic systems of antiquity. These had their starting
point in the acceptance of the reality of the spirit, and struggled to give matter full
reality. The modern incomprehension of sacramentalism may rest ultimately on an
even more grave error: the background assumption that the spirit belongs to such an
utterly different order of being that in effect only matter is real, and that seeking
concrete manifestation of the spirit in the realm of matter is both doomed to failure
and somehow blasphemous.
In this chapter we shall be surveying the many images used by the Church Fathers to
describe the efficacy of the Eucharist and examining their theology of its effects. The
Fathers’ use of so many unsystematised images reflects an immediacy of experience.
This throws up the question of the provenance of the liturgy. If this is seen as a product
of theological reflection, it is hard to understand how it could give rise to unmediated
experience amongst those – theologians – who are responsible for producing it. Adrian
Kavanagh made the case that the Eucharist deserves to be seen as just as much part of
the earliest tradition as the stories which came to be gathered together as the gospels.
According to this theory, true liturgy as a locus of encounter is a source of theological
reflection, and not a result of theological endeavour.

1
cp. Wainwright in Hastings et al, The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, Article on Eucharist, p. 215:
‘The eucharistic presence of Christ has been a constant confession of the Church, even though Christians
have differed sharply in their accounts of the manner in which he is both ‘host and food’.
2
Frances Young: Sacrifice and the Death of Christ, London 1975, pp. 137-8
3
cp. Owen Chadwick: The Reformation, London 1988, pp. 78-79
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Christians do not worship because they believe. They believe because the One
in whose gift faith lives is regularly met in the common act of worship.
4
Irenaus confirms this in his Against Heresies, when he says:
But our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn
establishes our opinion.
Irenaeus (b. 2nd century; d. c 200)
Against Heresies Book IV, 18.5
It is certainly very noticeable that the Fathers do not call the origin and essential forms
of the Eucharist into question; even John Chrysostom, who was the creator of a
liturgy, speaks of it as a given.
The ongoing discussion on ‘liturgical theology’ has modified the initial positions
adopted by theologians such as Kavanagh. This has led to a renewed appreciation that
the liturgy is something real in itself, rather than an illustration of theological precepts.
We shall examine below the idea of the Eucharist as participation in the life of Christ.
Crichton describes liturgy in general as participation in the life of the Trinity:
the liturgy in celebration introduces the believing Christian into the very life of
the triune God.
5
The Trinity reveals God as being in relation. In his self-disclosure as Word and Spirit,
God’s fundamental tendency to communicate with his creation is revealed. In the
Incarnation, God reveals his inclination towards the earth, towards embodiment and
participation. In the ultimate indwelling of earthliness in the grave and its lifting up in
Resurrection, the original and archetypal sacramental gesture is revealed. In this way it
is quite right to speak of Jesus Christ as the ‘Ursacrament’
6

The doctrine of the homoousion or consubstantiality of the Son with the Father was
the decisive breakthrough in understanding the Trinity at the Council of Nicaea. This
led in turn to the real-isation of the consubstantiality of divinity and humanity in Jesus.
These two achievements opened the way for a mingling of the created and uncreated
orders, and their ultimate union.
Salvation as henosis and theosis was not a change of state but a dynamic achieved
through suffering and compassion. Jesus’ eschatological message re-emphasised again
and again that the victory achieved on Easter Sunday was only the inauguration of the
in-breaking of the end-time. The Fathers saw the Eucharist as a realisation of what was
inaugurated. The power of their argument came from their experience of salvation.
In the definitive work, The Study of the Liturgy, Halliburton makes clear the underlying
soteriological thrust behind this understanding. He draws out the parallelism – much
used by the Fathers, as we shall see below – between the transformation of the
humanity of Jesus in the Incarnation and the nature of bread in the Eucharist:
The argument … is that as human nature was transformed by its union with
the Word (through the action of the Spirit), so the Eucharistic elements are
transformed in order that we too may be transformed and saved from
incorruption. … The motif is in fact soteriological rather than magical … For

4
Adrian Kavanagh, in Cheslyn Jones et al: The Study of Liturgy2. London and New York, 1992, p. 6
5
Crichton, in Jones op cit, p. 7
6
Cp. ‘The Ursacrament is Jesus Christ, in whose human form the whole fullness of God dwells bodily’
(Col 2,9).’* Barbara Hallensleben: Heterodoxie—Wie wird der Streit um die religiöse Wahrheit
geführt?—Eine Antwort aus katholischer Sicht. Web: http://www.oki-regensburg.de/hetero.htm
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what is received is not a thing but a person, a dynamic and outgoing redeemer
who demands a response from those who approach him.
7
This points up the very aspect that is a challenge to many modern interpreters of the
Eucharist: just where they would locate the most intimate, personal meeting with God,
comes something which they see as mechanical or automatic. The Fathers were better
able to bear the paradox. From a theoretical viewpoint, there is no way of bridging the
gap between receiving a ‘thing’, as it might be medicine, and encountering a person.
Experience of the Eucharist provided what intellect could not provide: a way of
reconciling these two seeming opposites.
St John Chrysostom makes the paradox particularly vivid, playing on the tension
between a person encountered in love and the thing consumed with typical rhetorical
flair (what preacher today would dare to point out that just as we often bite our lover
playfully, we bite Christ in consuming the host?)
All are nourished by the same Body….When you see [the Body of Christ] lying
on the altar, say to yourself, “Because of this Body I am no longer earth and
ash, no longer a prisoner, but free. Because of this Body I hope for heaven,
and I hope to receive the good things that are in heaven, immortal life, the lot
of the angels, familiar conversation with Christ. This Body, scourged and
crucified, has not been fetched by death…This is that Body which was blood-
stained, which was pierced by a lance, and from which gushed forth those
saving fountains, one of blood and the other of water, for all the world”…This
is the Body which He gave us, both to hold in reserve and to eat, which was
appropriate to intense love; for those whom we kiss with abandon we often
even bite with our teeth.
John Chrysostom (c.347– c.407) Homilies on Corinthians 8, 1[2]; 24, 2[3]; 24,
2[4]; 24, 4[7]
There was little if any systematic theological deliberation about the Eucharist in the
patristic period.
8
Church history shows that such deliberation is often driven by
controversy, and there were no crises of interpretation of the Eucharist in the patristic
period to compare with the debates on the Trinity and Christology. There may be a
deeper reason, too. The transition from unmediated experience with a kind of pre-
conceptual understanding to conceptual debate seems to reflect a change in
consciousness. Only that which is no longer understood experientially is the subject of
debate.
If this principle is true, it would indicate that the experience and unreflected
‘understanding’ of the Eucharist survived longer than the experience of the Trinity, or
of the reality of the Incarnation of Christ. It may seem counter-intuitive to talk of a
loss of understanding of the Trinity in relation to the period in which the doctrine of
the Trinity was first developed in the disputes of the fourth century. There is however
an question which has received far too little attention from theologians focussed on
the kind of explicit formulations of faith which one can learn for an examination: what
stood behind the 300 years’ usage of the Trinitarian formula in the Baptism, or the

7
John Halliburton: The Patristic Theology of the Eucharist, in Jones et al Op. cit., p. 250
8
‘In the patristic period there was remarkably little in the way of controversy on the subject [of the
doctrine of the Eucharist], Article on ‘Eucharist’ in Frank Leslie Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone
(eds): The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford, 1997, p. 567; and cp. Martin Wallraff:
Von der Eucharistie zum Mysterium. Abendmahlsfrömmigkeit in der Spätantike. In: Patristica et
Oecumenica. Festschrift für Wolfgang Bienert zum 65. Geburtstag. Hrsg. v. Peter Gemeinhardt u. Uwe
Kühneweg, Marburg 2004, p. 90 and
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epiclesis in the Eucharist, if the Trinity was only ‘invented’ in the fourth century? It is
not likely that we will ever have a definitive answer to this, by virtue of the nature of
unreflected experience. However, it is perhaps good to counteract the uncritical
devaluation of such modes of understanding, which stems from the unconscious
privileging of modes of thought congruent with those adopted by the student. This
study may make a small contribution to this effort, as it needs must draw on sources
which were never designed to add up to a coherent system.
In the Fathers’ expositions on the Eucharist, and their devotional and mystagogical
instruction, we come close to a world of immediate experience. Because of the lack of
high-level debate, we have to cast the net wide enough to include not only writings for
a theologically trained audience, but catechetical and mystagogical instruction, and
private letters. It is important always to bear in mind that experience formed the
background for these thoughts; experience was assumed too by the Fathers on the part
of their hearers and readers.
9
In stark contrast to the situation of many theologians
today, the Fathers were convinced that they experienced Christ daily in the holy office,
as Basil the Great describes in a letter to a Patrician Lady Caesaria:
To communicate each day and to partake of the holy Body and Blood of
Christ is good and beneficial; for He says quite plainly: “He that eats My Flesh
and drinks My Blood has eternal life.” Who can doubt that to share continually
in life is the same thing as having life abundantly? We ourselves communicate
four times each week…and on other days if there is a commemoration of any
saint.
Basil the Great, (born ca. 329; died 379)
Ignatius makes quite clear his existential longing to communicate:
I have no taste for the food that perishes nor for the pleasures of this life. I
want the Bread of God which is the Flesh of Christ, who was the seed of
David; and for drink I desire His Blood which is love that cannot be
destroyed.
Ignatius of Antioch (b. ca. 50; d. between 98 and 117)
Letter to the Romans § 7
The Fathers’ writings display an unquestioned assumption that the Eucharist effects
salvation, giving healing and bestowing life. It is the continuation of the salvific deed of
Christ. When we read the Christological and above all soteriological writings of the
Fathers, we need to bear in mind that the experience of the Eucharist is in the
background, informing their reflection. Athanasius uncovers this connection, which
for other Fathers is implicit.
For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word
of God entered our world. ... taking a body like our own, because all our
bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to
death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. …This He did that He might
turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make
them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of
His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly

9
Cp. Enrico Mazza: The Celebration of the Eucharist, trans. M J O’Connell, Minnesota 1999: “In these
[mystagogical] homilies, the Eucharist is explained to the neophytes after they have already taken part in
it, so that the experience of the rite is the basis for the theological understanding of it.”
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as straw from fire.
Athanasius (b. ca 296; d. 373): De Incarnatione § 8
We shall examine in more detail how Athanasius’ radically physical conception of the
Incarnation leads to a Eucharistic theology of participation at the end of this chapter.
Two centuries before Athanasius, Justin had made a similar point:
For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as
Jesus Christ our Saviour being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood
for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the
Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are
nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.
Justin Martyr (b. ca 100; d. ca 165): First Apology, Ch. 66
And Leo the Great, in a sermon on Ascension Day, gives this thought a chronological
framework:
What our Redeemer did visibly has passed over into the sacraments.
Leo the Great (b. unknown; d. 461)
Sermo 74, De Ascens.
J. D. Crichton interprets Leo’s words:
[Leo] is considering how, after the forty days of Christ’s resurrection-life, he
was lifted up to remain at the right hand of his Father until he should come
again. Now all that he did in his earthly life is to be found in the sacraments, the
liturgy that [Leo] and his hearers were celebrating.
10
The importance of this link cannot be over-emphasised. Our situation as modern
theologians, with our specialisations in the various fields of Systematic Theology and
Liturgical Theology, tends to make us see the doctrine of Christ in a different category
to the study of the Eucharist. For the early theologians of the church, this separation
did not exist.
Köster makes this clear on hand of Ignatius’ understanding of the Incarnation: Ignatius
points
to the suprahistorical Henosis of Spirit and Flesh, understood in a
metaphysical way. Whoever takes part in the sacrament participates in this
union, and so attains salvation.
11
All of this would mean that it could be legitimate to include all soteriological
statements of the Fathers in our study of their theology of the Eucharist, in a kind of
communicatio idiomatum. For reasons of space, I do not intend to do this here.
Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind the original unity of what for us are two
disparate areas in the thought of the Fathers. In places it allows us to fill out a
fragment of thought from the one area with a fuller exposition from the other.
It is important not to strain to impose a systematic framework on the Fathers’
utterances on the Eucharist. They do not show that there was one and only one
theology of the Eucharist; far from it: they demonstrate that the experienced reality of
the Eucharist as a continuation of Christ’s salvific deed gave rise to a great variety of
images and alternative conceptions.

10
James Dunlop Crichton: A Theology of Worship, in Jones et al, op. cit., p. 14
11
Helmut Köster: Geschichte und Kultus im Johannesevangelium und bei Ignatius, ZTK 54 ( 1957), 56-
69. Quoted in Lothar Wehr: Arznei der Unsterblichkeit, Münster 1987, p. 3
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The overall theme: objective change 
Beneath the sometimes bewildering array of images used by the Fathers to describe the
efficacy of the Eucharist—there are at least fifteen distinct thematic groups, of which
we will only be able to examine three in depth in this study—there is one underlying
theme. They all attribute an objective efficacy to the Eucharist. Partaking of
communion brings about a change, which may reach as far as the physis, the nature of
the recipient. It does not only serve to remind him of Christ’s saving deed, or to inspire
him to follow the example of Christ’s self-giving love. This is not to say that the
Fathers neglect the importance of the frame of mind and spiritual state of the one
receiving the communion, in line with Paul’s warning in I Corinthians 11:27. However,
it is important to see that Paul himself is making a point that is far from than
receptionist—the wrong attitude in the recipient does not prevent the communion
from having any effect, it merely changes the objective effect from a positive into a
negative one. The Fathers follow this interpretation.
The objective understanding of the effects of the Eucharist eclipsed the aspect that had
been equally important in the New Testament era, that of table fellowship
12
. It found
expression in usages which seem to us today almost bizarre, such as the practice of
taking some of the host home and taking it daily before meals, or rubbing it on the
places where an illness manifested.
13
This emphasis on the physical efficacy of communion should not however be seen
through the lens of the Reformation, as something merely mechanical. In her classic
study on the emergence of the Creeds, Frances Young makes the point that the
physical understanding of salvation and its instrument, the Eucharist, was forged in the
crucible of the conflict with Gnostic doctrines that denied the goodness of creation.
Necessarily this implies the resurrection of the body, the restoration of the
whole person by the creative power of God … The creedal doctrine of the
resurrection of the flesh affirms that the bodily existence of humanity is to be
healed and restored along with its moral and spiritual being, and the eucharist,
for Irenaeus a joyful sacrifice of thanksgiving offering back to God the good
things of this creation, then becomes spiritual food, or as Ignatius put it, a kind
of ‘drug’ or ‘medicine’ that imparts immortality to those who participate.
14
Overview 
Before studying three images of the efficacy of the Eucharist in greater depth, it may
be useful to give an overview of the many images. We have already seen the quotation
from John Chrysostom above:
All are nourished by the same Body….When you see [the Body of Christ] lying
on the altar, say to yourself, “Because of this Body I am no longer earth and
ash, no longer a prisoner, but free. Because of this Body I hope for heaven,
and I hope to receive the good things that are in heaven, immortal life, the lot
of the angels, familiar conversation with Christ.
Homilies on Corinthians 8

12
Cp. Paul Bradshaw: Early Christian Worship, London 1996, pp. 40-43
13
Cp. Wallraff, op. cit., p.96. See too Owen Chadwick Chadwick: The Reformation. London 1988, pp 23-
24: ‘Since the darkest ages peasants had consumed the dust from saints’ tombs or used the Host as an
amulet or collected pretended relics or believed incredible and unedifying miracles or substituted the
Virgin or a patron saint for the Savior. In 1500 they were ardently doing these things.’
14
Frances Young: The Making of the Creeds, London 2002, p. 85
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This passage introduces a number of motifs that are present in many of the Fathers’
writings. First is the image of nourishment, which we shall examine below. Then
comes the rescue from corruption (‘earth and ash’); then a motif of liberation. The
ability to hope may seem more like the subjective answer to the experience of
salvation, but Chrysostom’s sense seems to be that the Eucharist itself bestows or
restores the ability to hope which would otherwise be lost. The motif of immortality
is developed more fully in many other passages, some of which we have seen above.
In a remarkable passage involving a typology of exodus and the Eucharist, Cyril of
Alexandria develops the images of purification and aversion.
You must consider your senses as the door to a house. Through the senses all
images of things enter into the heart, and, through the senses, the innumerable
multitude of lusts pour into it. The Prophet Joel calls the senses windows,
saying: “They shall enter in at our windows like a thief” (Jl. 2:9), because these
windows have not been marked with the precious blood of Christ. Moreover,
the Law commanded that, after the slaughter (of the lamb), the Israelites were
to smear the doorposts and the lintels of their houses with its blood, showing
by this that the precious blood of Christ protects our own earthly dwelling-
place, which is to say, our body, and that the death brought about by the
transgression is repelled through our enjoyment of the partaking of life (that is,
of life-giving Communion). Further, through our sealing (with the blood of
Christ) we distance from ourselves the destroyer.
Cyril (I) of Alexandria (b. 376, d. 444)
Glaphyra in Exodum 2.2, PG 69, 428B.
Clement distinguishes a twofold process, distinguishing between the blood of the body
and the spiritual blood, which give rise to rescue from corruption and anointing:
And the blood of the Lord is twofold. For there is the blood of His flesh, by
which we are redeemed from corruption; and the spiritual, that by which we
are anointed. And to drink the blood of Jesus, is to become partaker of the
Lord’s immortality; the Spirit being the energetic principle of the Word, as
blood is of flesh. Accordingly, as wine is blended with water, so is the Spirit
with man. And the one, the mixture of wine and water, nourishes to faith;
while the other, the Spirit, conducts to immortality. And the mixture of both—
of the water and of the Word—is called Eucharist, renowned and glorious
grace; and they who by faith partake of it are sanctified both in body and soul.
Clement of Alexandria (b. ca 150, d. 211-216)
The Instructor of the Children”. [2,2,19,4]
Here, the Eucharist effects immortality and sanctification.
John Chrysostom brings an image of renewal, referring to the ‘image of God’ in which
humanity was created (Gen. 1: 26)
Let us then return from that Table like lions breathing fire, having become
fearsome to the devil, thinking about our Head (Christ) and the love He has
shown for us…. This blood causes the image of our King to be fresh within
us, it produces unspeakable beauty, and, watering and nourishing our soul
frequently, it does not permit its nobility to waste away….
He too ascribes a power of aversion to the blood, which is at the same time
purifying:
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This blood, worthily received, drives away demons and keeps them far from
us, while it calls to us the angels and the Master of angels. For wherever they
see the Master’s blood, devils flee and angels run to gather together….
This blood is the salvation of our souls. By it the soul is washed, is made
beautiful, and is inflamed; and it causes our intellect to be brighter than fire
and makes the soul gleam more than gold....
A further image is enrobing:
Those who partake of this blood stand with the angels and the powers that are
above, clothed in the kingly robe itself, armed with spiritual weapons. But I
have not yet said anything great by this: for they are clothed even with the
King Himself.
All from On John 46.3–4
15
John Chrysostom relates a vision which was reported to him first-hand, which
introduces the image of post-mortem protection:
Moreover another person told me—not having heard it from someone else,
but having himself been deemed worthy to both see and hear it—with regard
to those who are about to depart this life, that if they happen to partake of the
Mysteries, with a pure conscience, when they are about to breathe their last,
angels keep guard over them because of what they have just received, and bear
them hence (to heaven)
De Sacerdotio 6.4, SC 272, 318; NPNF (V1-09), 76.
It is remarkable that the Fathers can ascribe to the Eucharist the power of forgiveness
of sins, and purification, functions which modern praxis would distribute between
penance and baptism. Clement of Rome exhorts his flock:
Now we have received the precious body and the precious blood of Christ, let
us give thanks to Him who has thought us worthy to partake of these His holy
mysteries; and let us beseech Him that it may not be to us for condemnation,
but for salvation, to the advantage of soul and body, to the preservation of
piety, to the remission of sins, and to the life of the world to come.
Clement of Rome (dates unknown; bishop of Rome ca 90-99)
Apostolic Constitutions, Book 8, ch. 14
16
Cyril brings the aspect of purification:
The precious blood of Christ not only frees us from every corruption, but it
also cleanses us from every impurity lying hidden within us, and it does not
allow us to grow cold on account of sloth, but rather makes us fervent in the
Spirit.”
De Adoratione et Cultu in Spiritu et Veritate 17
Justin Martyr develops a full parallelism between the Incarnation, by which the divine
nature of the Word united with a human nature in Jesus, and the transformation of the
elements. These in turn lead to the transformation of our bodies:
For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as
Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood

15
PG 59, 260–262; NPNF (V1-14), 164–165.
16
SC 336, 210; ANF (07), 491
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for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the
Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are
nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.
First Apology, Ch. 66
Here we see a three-step process: God transforms the ‘flesh’ into Godself; the word of
the incarnate Lord has the power to transform the elements; these in turn nourish and
transform our human nature. The Eucharist is a part of the economy of salvation.
This brief survey of images, which could be added to, demonstrates the living fullness
of the Fathers’ writings.
Holy Food 
The first image we shall look at in more detail is the image of Holy Food. The cultic
meal is one of the original components of human religiousness. As Bradshaw says,
‘sacred meals, expressive of the human relationship to the divine, form a part of the
ritual practice of many religions.’
17
Their significance varied and developed over time.
It would go beyond the bounds of this chapter to trace this development in detail. For
this context, it is important to note that in the New Testament period, sacramental
meals were consumed in the mystery religions, as Angus points out:
The sacramental meal of the Mysteries had almost the vogue in popular
religion which the Eucharist enjoys today in Christian circles, and it offered the
same wide field of speculation as to its blessings and modes of operation.
18
The immediate background to the ritual meal of the Christian Community was Jewish
religious life. In the communion sacrifices of the Hebrew Bible,
part of what was offered was returned to those who had offered it to be eaten
by them. In effect, they shared a sacred meal with God as a sign of their
acceptance by him through the sacrificial act.’
19
The practice of holding a ritual meal had become an ever-more important part of
Jewish religious life. The meal came to be seen as a token of the end-time, when all the
elect would be invited to sit down with God at the great feast.
20
It was this tradition
that Jesus developed and scandalously subverted in his own practice of sharing table-
fellowship with outcasts, the ritually impure of the Jewish world,
21
and developed in his
teaching:
Jesus in his parables pictured God’s reign as a feast (Matt. 8:11 = Luke 13: 29;
Matt 22: 1-15; 25: 1-13; Luke 14: 16-24) where his own followers would join
him at his table (Matt. 26: 29) …
Elements of the Jewish meal-ritual are clearly contained in I Corinthians 11: 24 f.
Bradshaw sees the meal Paul describes in the tradition of the eschatological meal:

17
Early Christian Worship Op. cit., p 38
18
Samuel Angus: The Religious Quests of the Graeco-Roman World: A Study in the Historical
Background of Early Christianity. New York, 1967, p. 167
19
ibid p. 167
20
cp. Isaiah 25: 6-9
21
cp. Dennis Eric Nineham: Saint Mark (Penguin New Testament Commentaries), London 1992, pp.
94-5
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The whole meal event was thus both a prophetic symbol of the future and also
a means of entering into that future in the present.
22
However, even if it had been dominant in New Testament times, the understanding of
the meal as an eschatological event foreshadowing the fellowship with God in the end-
time rapidly faded away along with the practice of eating a full meal in common
(Sättigungsmahl). It is perhaps straining the point to make too clear a separation between
Eucharist and community meal. As Rowland points out, this meal had been a
celebration of the Christian community, but also a “cultic demonstration of
communion with the Saviour”.
23
The Didache (provenance probably early 2
nd
century) sees the Eucharist as “spiritual
food and drink” which gives “eternal life” (10, 3). The duality of bodily and spiritual
nourishment implicit in John 6 is the background here. Although the opposition of
bodily food and spiritual nourishment seems at first to be crudely dualistic, closer
examination shows that in fact an underlying monism is restored. Already in John 6,
and all the more in some of the passages we shall examine, it is clear that the means of
spiritual nourishment is the transformed bread. In John 6 Jesus repels most of his
(Jewish) followers by drawing this thought to its conclusion: ‘Jesus said to them, “I tell
you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have
no life in you.”’ (John 6: 53). In other words, salvation, spiritual nourishment, come
not from a denial of the physical realm, but from accepting the physical food that is
bearer of spiritual power. As Geoffrey Wainwright says:
the ‘eating of the bread’ and the ‘drinking of the cup’ locate the divine work of
salvation celebrated in the Eucharist firmly amid the material creation and
embodied humanity.
24
Thus we see not Gnostic dualism and denial of the flesh, but what Frances Young calls
‘practical dualism’.
25
We have to recognise that in its present state, the world is
alienated from its origin and from that which could restore it. Nevertheless, the world
contains what can be made the means of restoration.
Justin makes a distinction between “common bread and drink” and “food consecrated
by the Word of prayer which comes from him from which our flesh and blood are
nourished by transformation.”(see full quotation above). Here again we see the
communication of qualities: the power that changes the elements, changes us too, in
nourishing us.
Ignatius typically contrasts the perishable bread and the elements of the eucharist:
I have no taste for the food that perishes nor for the pleasures of this life. I
want the Bread of God which is the Flesh of Christ, who was the seed of
David; and for drink I desire His Blood which is love that cannot be
destroyed.
Letter to the Romans, paragraph 7, circa 80-110 A.D.

22
Early Christian Worship, Op. cit., p. 40
23
Christopher Rowland.: Christian Origins—From Messianic Movement to Christian Religion, London,
1985, p. 242
24
In Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason and Hugh Pyper (Editors): The Oxford Companion to Christian
Thought, Oxford 2000, Article on Eucharist, p. 216
25
Young, The Making of the Creeds op. cit., p. 96
Page 11 of 26

Again, the paradoxical mixing of realms is striking – a radical rejection of the world
leads Ignatius not to ascetic fasting but to seek a different kind of nourishment. In fact
in another letter he criticizes heretics who
abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that
the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for
our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who
deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes
Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2-7:1
It is not possible to establish exactly whom Ignatius has in mind here. For our
argument it is not important; what is clear is that Ignatius sees an absolute
identification between bodily communion and salvation.
Tertullian uses typically stark imagery to bring this thought:
The flesh feeds on THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST, so that the
SOUL TOO may fatten on God.
Tertullian (b. ca 160; d. ca 225)
Resurrection of the Dead 8:3
Clement of Alexandria too uses starkly realistic imagery in his description of the
condescension of the Word:
The Word is everything to a child: both Father and Mother, both Instructor
and Nurse. ‘Eat My Flesh,’ He says, ‘and drink My Blood.’ The Lord supplies
us with these intimate nutrients. He delivers over His Flesh, and pours out His
Blood; and nothing is lacking for the growth of His children. O incredible
mystery!
The Instructor of the Children [1,6,41,3]
The condescension of Christ makes possible his adaptation to the needs of those he
saves. Typically for Clement’s thought, this happens not for rescue from corruption
but for a positive end, for ‘growth’.
What runs through these various passages with their diverse imagery is a conception of
a ‘hunger’ and a ‘nourishment’ which are objectively real, even if they are not physical.
It is anachronistic to understand these terms as metaphors for purely inward,
subjective processes. Tertullian’s ‘fattening’ of the soul; Clement’s ‘intimate nutrients’
effect an objective change. Just as eating brings about measurable, physical changes in
a human being, so receiving the Eucharist satisfies a real need.
If we attempt to generalise, a picture of this need emerges. We have already established
that any onesided, ascetic desire simply to escape the body is held in check – perhaps
in part by the very praxis of bodily communion. Earthly existence is affirmed, whilst
being acknowledged as being in a provisional state. The soul is not nourished by the
kind of food that Adam had to work for ‘by the sweat of your brow’ (Gen. 3: 19). This
reference sets the scene for the background of the image of feeding in the Old
Testament, which is full of images of the food that was lost in paradise and will be
regained in the time to come. The promise of the land ‘running with milk and honey’
(eg Exodus 3: 17) is not just an comment on soil-fertility in the Mediterranean littoral;
it has an eschatological overtone, which becomes explicit in the expectation of the
messianic meal in the end-time.
All of this means that the Fathers experienced the Eucharist as a foretaste of the
recreation of humanity that they confidently expected in the end-time. Bread and wine
Page 12 of 26

are the very earthly vehicles for the nourishment which does not deny the earth and
the embodied state, but completes it.
In a lyrical passage contrasting the Christian Eucharist with the meals of the pagan
temples, Firmicus Maternus attributes to this ‘food’ a series of qualities: [check out for
an Eng. Translation] ‘It is another food, which bestows Salvation and life’ – images
with which we are already familiar. When he continues: ‘[it is] another food, which
commends man to the highest God, and reconciles him to Him,’ he ascribes central
images from soteriology to the Eucharist, in terms which we would expect to be used
of the Incarnation, or of the offering of the Mass as sacrifice. Here, however, the
consumption of the food itself is seen as effecting atonement, and as putting human
beings right with God. Taken one-sidedly, this could seem the extreme of justification
by works.
He continues speaking of this food ‘which enlivens those grown weary, and calls back
those who have lost their way’. This is an interesting moment. The “food” of the
Eucharist now appears to have an effect on the moral makeup of those that consume
it. In other words, speaking with Pelagius, it strengthens the resolve of those who
would and may follow the right path. Firmicus continues: the food gives ‘those who
are dying the signs of eternal immortality.’ Subjective and objective efficacy dissolve
into one. As well as effecting salvation, the Eucharist is a comfort to those dying as a
symbol of eternal immortality.
Later, the meal functions as a “call” to all: ‘Christ is calling you back to the light with
his meal.’ Now the call, which of course depends on the response of those called,
translates us from a realm of darkness to one of light, from the fallen world to a new
paradise: ‘and animates the parts which have become gangrenous through the strong
poison, and the limbs which have grown stiff.’
26
We shall examine these images more fully when we turn to the image of Eucharist as
medicine. Here they serve to demonstrate the experience of the practical dualism: the
consequences of the Fall are not just internal, or ‘spiritual’ transactions between
humanity and God; they manifest in the extremes of gangrenous and sclerotic limbs.
Cyril of Alexandria too knows the fortifying of the inner life through the food received
in the Eucharist.
We have been instructed in these matters and filled with an unshakable faith,
that that which seems to be bread, is not bread, though it tastes like it, but the
Body of Christ, and that which seems to be wine, is not wine, though it too
tastes as such, but the Blood of Christ . . . draw inner strength by receiving this
bread as spiritual food and your soul will rejoice.
Catecheses, 22, 9; Myst. 4
Theodore of Mopsuestia makes the same point even more directly:
At first [the offering] is laid upon the altar as mere bread, and wine mixed with
water; but by the coming of the Holy Spirit it is transformed into the Body and
the Blood, and thus it is changed into the power of a spiritual and immortal
nourishment.
(b. ca 350; d. ca 428)
Catechetical Homilies 16

26
All quotes from ‘Concerning the errors of heathen religion’, quoted in Kraft [REF???], 293*
Page 13 of 26

Ambrose brings another motif in his treatise On the Mysteries. In a classic instance of the
Fathers’ allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs, he identifies the church with
the beloved of the song:
Christ, then, feeds His Church with these sacraments, by means of which the
substance of the soul is strengthened, and seeing the continual progress of her
grace, He rightly says to her: “How comely are thy breasts, my sister, my
spouse, how comely they are made by wine, and the smell of thy garments is
above all spices. A dropping honeycomb are thy lips, my spouse, honey and
milk are under thy tongue, and the smell of thy garments is as the smell of
Lebanon. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a garden enclosed, a
fountain sealed.”
Ambrose of Milan (b. ca 338; d. 397)
Cant. iv. 10 ff. B
It is striking that Christ must first nourish the church—she, as a bodily organism needs
nourishment. Strengthened by this, she can be generous:
Wherefore, too, the Church, beholding so great grace, exhorts her sons and her
friends to come together to the sacraments, saying: “Eat, my friends, and drink
and be inebriated, my brother.”
Cant. v. 1.
What she offers to eat is nothing other than Christ himself:
What we eat and what we drink the Holy Spirit has elsewhere made plain by
the prophet, saying, “Taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man
that hopeth in Him.” Ps. xxxiv. [xxxiii.]. In that sacrament is Christ, because it
is the Body of Christ, it is therefore not bodily food but spiritual. … Lastly,
that food strengthens our heart, and that drink “maketh glad the heart of
man,” Ps. civ. [ciii.] as the prophet has recorded.
The intensity of such passages, which could be amplified by many more, witnesses to
the Fathers’ experience of the Eucharist as an encounter with their Saviour. Bradshaw
makes clear his regret at the passing of the Eucharist as a purely eschatological meal, a
foretaste of the end-time.
27
Jürgen Moltmann is similarly critical. Starting in Theology of
Hope, Moltmann develops a strong critique of the Church as liturgical community,
which, he claims, substitutes for the ‘apocalyptic of the promised, as yet unrealised
lordship of Christ’ the ‘cultic presence of his eternal, heavenly lordship’
28
and leads to
the theological neglect of the Cross. This ‘present eschatology’ deprives history of its
eschatological direction.
A sacramental, salvation historical future hope replaces the earthly-historical
hope: the church penetrates the world continually with heavenly truth,
heavenly life-forces and heavenly salvation.
29
He brings this into connection with Paul’s criticism of the congregation in Corinth,
which he summarises as the eschatologia crucis. The exaggerated enthusiasm of the
Corinthians had to restrained by the ‘not yet’ of the parousia. Their tendency to neglect
the reality of earthly existence had to be counterbalanced by the reminder of the cross.

27
Cp. Bradshaw, Early Christian Worship, pp. 96 ff
28
Jürgen Moltmann: Theologie der Hoffnung: Untersuchungen zur Begründung und zu den
Konsequenzen einer christlichen Eschatologie (Gütersloh, Germany: Chr. Kaiser 1997), III §4 p. 143
29
ibid III § 4 p. 144
Page 14 of 26

Moltmann subsumes another central strand in Paul’s thinking, which reminds his
readers of the intense experience of Christ as present reality, as in Rom. 6:4 and
numerous parallels into his eschatological model.
The baptised have died with Christ … but they have not already risen with him
and gone to heaven in a cultic perfect tense.
30
However, Paul does not oppose sacramental union and eschatological hope, but rather
sees the experience in worship as that which stimulates hope by creating awareness of
the provisional character of our present existence, as in Col. 3: 1-4: the believers have
indeed been ‘raised with Christ’ in baptism; this should make them ‘set your minds on
things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with
Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with
him in glory.’ Paul seems here to be more dialectical than Moltmann is prepared to be:
the believers are both raised with Christ and their lives are hidden with God. Moltmann
can accept ‘buried with Christ’ but not ‘raised with him’. This weakness is displayed
too in Moltmann’s discussion of the liturgy in The Church in the Power of the Spirit. Here
the doctrine of the real presence is dissolved into an eschatological anticipation of
Christ’s coming.
31
Both these scholars imply that the Fathers are using figurative language to make a
theological case – much as they would themselves. But the Fathers are speaking from
experience: far from neglecting the future realisation, they concentrate on what has
been inaugurated as present reality. They are convinced that through the Resurrection,
Christ has attained incorruptibility. This incorruptibility is transmitted to those who
communicate. The theosis is made most concrete! Or is it the other way round? Has
their experience of the nourishment at least strengthened their conviction concerning
the divinization of humanity that occurred through the Incarnation and Resurrection?
That such a thought is not absurd is demonstrated by Athanasius’ appeal to the
experience of worship in the later phase of the Arian controversy.
32
Medicine of immortality  
The fact that we are well used to using physical nourishment as a metaphor for
spiritual nourishment can blind us to the literal way in which the Fathers use those
images. Medicine is less used as a metaphor, so this image confronts us with the
physicality of the efficacy in a starker way.
The one explicit use of the phrase ‘medicine of immortality’,
φαρμακον αθανασιας comes in Ignatius’ letter to the Ephesians 20.2, where he
speaks of the congregation coming together
in common through grace, individually, in one faith, and in Jesus Christ, who
was of the seed of David according to the flesh, being both the Son of man
and the Son of God, … breaking one and the same bread, which is the
medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which
causes] that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ.
There is a precursor to this image in Ignatius’ use of the image of Christ as a doctor in
chapter 7 of the letter to the Ephesians:

30
ibid III § 4 p. 146
31
Jürgen Moltmann: The Church in the Power of the Holy Spirit – a contribution to messianic
Ecclesiology, tr. Margaret Kohl, London: SCM Press, 1992, pp. 253-254
32
see Henry Chadwick: The Early Church, London, 1987, pp. 147-8
Page 15 of 26

There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made
and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of
God; first passible and then impassible.
Here again we see the continuity between Christology and the theology of the
Eucharist. The Soteriological concept of Christ as Healer—implicit already in the
Hebrew name Jeshua, Jesus, and a prominent feature of the synoptic Gospels—is
developed to his being the physician (ιατρος). What could be more natural than to see
the Eucharist as the continuing ‘treatment’. Unlike an ordinary doctor, Christ does not
dispense medicine extraneous to himself: the means of his healing are the Eucharistic
elements, that is to say, his own body and blood.
33
Lothar Wehr makes it clear that Ignatius’ theology of the Eucharist is to be seen in the
context of the rest of his theology, whose most important elements for Wehr are ‘the
true understanding of the person of Jeus Christ, Ignatius’ longing for martyrdom, and
the unity of the church.
34
He brings these aspects partly to justify his programme of
removing from Ignatius’ theology any taint of what he sees as magic. We shall see how
once again the division introduced by a modern reader is anachronistic when applied to
a writer in the ancient world.
Ambrose too develops the parallel between Christ the healer in his earthly ministry and
the medicine available in the Eucharist:
To Him, therefore, let all come who would be made whole. Let them receive
the medicine which He hath brought down from His Father and made in
heaven, preparing it of the juices of those celestial fruits that wither not. This is
of no earthly growth, for nature nowhere possesses this compound. Of
wondrous purpose took He our flesh, to the end that He might show that the
law of the flesh had been subjected to the law of the mind. He was incarnate,
that He, the Teacher of men, might overcome as man.
This medicine Peter beheld, and left His nets, that is to say, the instruments
and security of gain, renouncing the lust of the flesh as a leaky ship, that
receives the bilge, as it were, of multitudinous passions. Truly a mighty remedy,
that not only removed the scar of an old wound, but even cut the root and
source of passion. O Faith, richer than all treasure-houses; O excellent remedy,
healing our wounds and sins!
Exposition of the Christian Faith, Book 2, XI § 90 and 92
In his treatise Concerning Widows, Ambrose points to this healing power of Christ as
the ultimate source of healing and comfort for those who take on a Christian ministry:
But let us return to the point, and not, while we are grieving over the wounds
of our sins, leave the physician, and whilst ministering to the sores of others,
let our own go on increasing. The Physician is then here asked for. … And so
now He comes, when called upon, to Peter’s mother-in-law. “And He stood
over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she arose and
ministered unto them.” S. Luke iv. 38. As He is worthy of being remembered,
so, too, is He worthy of being longed for, worthy, too, of love, for His
condescension to every single matter which affects men, and His marvellous
acts. He disdains not to visit widows, and to enter the narrow rooms of a poor

33
Cp. Owen F. Cummings: Eucharistic Doctors ??? is this really true?: A Theological History, London
??? 2005, p. 16
34
op. cit., p. 37*
Page 16 of 26

cottage. As God He commands, as man He visits.
Concerning Widows, Ch. 10 § 60
The connection between the Crucifixion and healing is made potently in this passage,
which explores the typology of the brazen serpent raised up by Moses as an antidote to
the snake-bites that were killing the Israelites in the desert (Numbers 21). First
Ambrose presents the brazen serpent as a means of combating the wiles of the devil:
And well did the Lord ordain that by the lifting up of the brazen serpent the
wounds of those who were bitten should be healed; for the brazen serpent is a
type of the Cross; for although in His flesh Christ was lifted up, yet in Him
was the Apostle crucified to the world and the world to him; for he says: “The
world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” “So the world was
crucified in its allurements, and therefore not a real but a brazen serpent was
hanged; because the Lord took on Him the likeness of a sinner, in the truth,
indeed, of His Body, but without the truth of sin, that imitating a serpent
through the deceitful appearance of human weakness, having laid aside the
slough of the flesh, He might destroy the cunning of the true serpent. And
therefore in the Cross of the Lord, which came to man’s help in avenging
temptation, I, who accept the medicine of the Trinity, recognize in the wicked
the offence against the Trinity.
On the Holy Spirit Book III Chapter 8
In another place, the connection between the cross and healing becomes even more
explicit:
He cast down his rod and it became a serpent which devoured the serpents of
Egypt; this signifying that the Word should become Flesh to destroy the
poison of the dread serpent by the forgiveness and pardon of sins. For the rod
stands for the Word that is true—royal—filled with power—and glorious in
ruling. The rod became a serpent; so He Who was the Son of God begotten of
the Father became the Son of man born of a woman, and lifted, like the
serpent, on the cross, poured His healing medicine on the wounds of man.
Wherefore the Lord Himself says: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
Three Books on the Duties of the Clergy, Book 2, XV, 94
We already referred to Firmicus Maternus, who sees the Eucharist as an antidote to
poison, which
animates the parts which have become gangrenous through the strong poison,
and the limbs which have grown stiff.
Along with the graphic imagery of the effects, which go right into the constitution, the
image of poison is a development of the medical imagery as the idea of poison places
the cause of our illness yet further outside of us. Even today, people are aware that the
conduct of their life may have a bearing on their susceptibility to illness. However, if I
have been poisoned, then I am indeed a victim and can only hope that someone has an
antidote.
The language of poison and antidote is developed by Gregory of Nyssa to striking
effect, using the parallelism we have noted above between the Incarnation and the
changing of the elements in the Eucharist. The poison referred to seems to be the
apple which Eve ate in paradise. I quote at length from the passage as it displays a
mature development of the theme. Gregory is at pains to develop a theory of the
Page 17 of 26

Eucharist out of the current scientific thinking on nourishment. He includes a long
excursus (omitted below) on the capacity of the body to transform the extraneous
elements taken in in nourishment into its own proper form.
For as they who owing to some act of treachery have taken poison, allay its
deadly influence by means of some other drug (for it is necessary that the
antidote should enter the human vitals in the same way as the deadly poison, in
order to secure, through them, that the effect of the remedy may be distributed
through the entire system), in like manner we, who have tasted the solvent of
our nature necessarily need something that may combine what has been so
dissolved, so that such an antidote entering within us may, by its own counter-
influence, undo the mischief introduced into the body by the poison. What,
then, is this remedy to be? Nothing else than that very Body which has been
shown to be superior to death, and has been the First-fruits of our life. For, in
the manner that, as the Apostle says (1 Cor. v. 6) a little leaven assimilates to
itself the whole lump, so in like manner that body to which immortality has
been given it by God, when it is in ours, translates and transmutes the whole
into itself. For as by the admixture of a poisonous liquid with a wholesome one
the whole drought is deprived of its deadly effect, so too the immortal Body,
by being within that which receives it, changes the whole to its own nature. Yet
in no other way can anything enter within the body but by being transfused
through the vitals by eating and drinking. It is, therefore, incumbent on the
body to admit this life-producing power in the one way that its constitution
makes possible. And since that Body only which was the receptacle of the
Deity received this grace of immortality, and since it has been shown that in no
other way was it possible for our body to become immortal, but by
participating in incorruption through its fellowship with that immortal Body, it
will be necessary to consider how it was possible that that one Body, being for
ever portioned to so many myriads of the faithful throughout the whole world,
enters through that portion, whole into each individual, and yet remains whole
in itself … If the subsistence of every body depends on nourishment, and this
is eating and drinking, and in the case of our eating there is bread and in the
case of our drinking water sweetened with wine, and if, as was explained at the
beginning, the Word of God, Who is both God and the Word, coalesced with
man’s nature, and when He came in a body such as ours did not innovate on
man’s physical constitution so as to make it other than it was, but secured
continuance for His own body by the customary and proper means, and
controlled its subsistence by meat and drink, the former of which was bread,—
just, then, as in the case of ourselves, as has been repeatedly said already, if a
person sees bread he also, in a kind of way, looks on a human body, for by the
bread being within it the bread becomes it, so also, in that other case, the body
into which God entered, by partaking of the nourishment of bread, was, in a
certain measure, the same with it; that nourishment, as we have said, changing
itself into the nature of the body. For that which is peculiar to all flesh is
acknowledged also in the case of that flesh, namely, that that Body too was
maintained by bread; which Body also by the indwelling of God the Word was
transmuted to the dignity of Godhead. Rightly, then, do we believe that now
also the bread which is consecrated by the Word of God is changed into the
Body of God the Word. For that Body was once, by implication, bread, but
has been consecrated by the inhabitation of the Word that tabernacled in the
Page 18 of 26

flesh. Therefore, from the same cause as that by which the bread that was
transformed in that Body was changed to a Divine potency, a similar result
takes place now. … Seeing, too, that all flesh is nourished by what is moist (for
without this combination our earthly part would not continue to live), just as
we support by food which is firm and solid the solid part of our body, in like
manner we supplement the moist part from the kindred element; and this,
when within us, by its faculty of being transmitted, is changed to blood, and
especially if through the wine it receives the faculty of being transmuted into
heat. Since, then, that God-containing flesh partook for its substance and
support of this particular nourishment also, and since the God who was
manifested infused Himself into perishable humanity for this purpose, viz. that
by this communion with Deity mankind might at the same time be deified, for
this end it is that, by dispensation of His grace, He disseminates Himself in
every believer through that flesh, whose substance comes from bread and
wine, blending Himself with the bodies of believers, to secure that, by this
union with the immortal, man, too, may be a sharer in incorruption. He gives
these gifts by virtue of the benediction through which He transelements
Gregory of Nyssa (b. ca 335; d. after 390)
The Great Catechism, Chapter 37
In a passage from his commentary on John, Cyril makes the efficacy of the Eucharist
graphic and in a way perhaps challenging for modern readers, dependent on the
frequency of communion:
Receive Holy Communion believing that it liberates us not only from death,
but also from every illness. And this is because, when Christ dwells within us
through frequent Communion, He pacifies and calms the fierce war of the
flesh, ignites piety toward God, and deadens the passions.
In Joannis Evangelium 4.2
Here, Cyril moves from imagery of medicine to what we might call a moral tonic: the
Eucharist brings harmony into the embattled soul, toning down the negative aspects of
the soul-life and encouraging the positive. This paradoxical mixture of objective and
subjective elements points up the fact that for Cyril there is no question of the
communion being a substitute for the ‘piety’ of the believer; nevertheless, it can incline
the soul towards such piety.
Samuel Angus casts light on the background to the medical imagery with an
examination of the concepts of healing in the ancient world:
Religion and Healing were closely associated in the Graeco-Roman world.
Soteria connoted to both Pagans and Christians more than its special meaning
to us; it connoted health of body and of soul, for neither Christians nor Pagans
distinguished rigidly between physical ills of body and maladies of soul. The
philosopher, the Christian teacher, and the medical practitioner were all healers.
The word soteria meant safety, health in the fullest human sense, and alleviation
of pain… Medical language was used in moral teaching and preaching,
religious language in the work of medicine. Vices were diseases in the eyes of
Christian teachers and Stoic and Platonic moralists.
35

35
The Religious Quests, op. cit., p. 414
Page 19 of 26

He quotes Clement of Alexandria who makes the link between the moral component
of medical healing and the medical aspect of spiritual healing:
Even as the physician secures health for those who co-operate with him to that
end, so does God secure eternal salvation for those who co-operate with Him
for knowledge and good behaviour.
Strom. VII 7.48 cited in Angus p. 37
As Angus points out,
Pagans and Christians alike observed no strict boundary-lines between the
physical and the hyper-physical, between the symbol and the resultant or
concomitant experience. Neither stheir science nor their philosophy
necessitated a strict delimitation.
36
φαρμακον αθανασιας was an existing concept in the ancient world.
αθανασια bzw. φαρμακον αθανασιας is a terminus technicus for a
particular medicine, which was used to treat various illnesses. Diodorus Siculus
… reports in his universal history, … the Egyptian doctors ascribed it to Isis.
She used it to awaken her dead son, Horus, from the dead, and to bestow
immortality on him.
37
Wehr shows that the concept was widespread in antiquity and even into the Middle
Ages. Thus Ignatius was drawing on an existing concept. Wehr states that his
innovation was to apply it to a cultic meal. However, he gives examples that show that
it was not in fact such a great innovation. The mystery-religions knew meals that
bestowed immortality. There is a conversion story of ‘Joseph and Aseneth’ which
combines the concepts of ‘bread of life’ and ‘cup of immortality’
38
. We have already
examined the images around a meal that bestows immortal life.
An inevitable limitation of this presentation is that by separating the images in order to
deal with them systematically, we give the appearance of alternatives where in fact they
are parts of an organic whole. It is easy to see how the concept of food that bestows
immortality might glide over into the concept of medicine; they are in fact two aspects
of the same thing. The modern attention to diet and sometimes questionable
supplements shows that even today, in regard to certain substances it is largely a
question of one’s inner attitude, whether they are to be seen as food or medicine.
However, every image reveals another aspect of the whole. The image of food is
positive and general. The Eucharist nourishes and strengthens Christians and maintains
an ongoing relationship with Christ. The image of medicine on the other hand brings
associations of illness, that is to say of something negative and specific which needs to
be healed. Food is a question of the conduct of life, a hygienic question in the true
sense, whereas medicine is a therapeutic question.
In an important article on the Orthodox understanding of medicine, Philip LeMasters
demonstrates that in this regard at least, the Orthodox churches have a greater claim to
be the successors of the Fathers:
Jeffrey P. Carpenter notes that Eastern Orthodoxy does not view salvation as
the equivalent of a disembodied or purely spiritual life; instead, it teaches that
“the problem of sickness and death and Christ’s victory over death is at the

36
ibid, pp. 132-3
37
Wehr op. cit., p. 107*
38
Wehr op. cit., p. 108
Page 20 of 26

centre of what we say about salvation.”
39
In clear distinction from the western
forensic theory of substitutionary atonement proposed, for example, by St
Anselm, the Christian East prefers a medical analogy of salvation that
understands human beings as sickly, weak creatures in need of genuine healing
from the corrupting consequences of sin—not fundamentally as violators of a
law who need someone to appease God’s wrath on their behalf. ‘In the East,
the sin of Adam is primarily understood not as disobedience to the Law but as
a willful disruption of the communion between God and man. As a result, a
distortion of man’s whole being, body and soul, entered in, as man is only
healthy when rightly related to God.’
40
St Ignatius of Antioch (c.35-c.107)
referred to the Holy Eucharist as ‘the medicine of immortality, and the
sovereign remedy by which we escape death and live in Jesus Christ for ever
more.’ The church ministers to the healing of the whole person in the holy
mysteries: baptism, chrismation, confession, holy matrimony, holy orders, and
holy unction all seek the healing of our corrupt nature in body, soul, and
spirit.
41
In contrast to the concentration on sin as the result of personal disobedience, which
ultimately condemns human beings to despair, as only obedience, only moral efforts
could put things right, this conception gives hope: we all experience the limitations of
our creaturely nature, and know that we need support in out efforts.
In a passage contrasting the specific remedies of ancient medicine with the
thoroughgoing constitutional change effected by Christ, Athanasius exemplifies this
attitude:
Asclepius was deified among them,because he practised medicine and found
out herbs for bodies that were sick; not forming them himself out of the earth,
but discovering them by science drawn from nature. But what is this to what
was done by the Saviour, in that, instead of healing a wound, He modified a
man’s original nature, and restored the body whole.
De Incarnatione, Chapter 49, 2
The medical terminology of Ignatius became common theological currenty; thus in his
Confessions, Augustine refers to the all the sacraments as medicines:
With what strong and bitter regret was I indignant at the Manicheans! Yet I
also pitied them; for they were ignorant of those sacraments, those medicines
and raved insanely against the cure that might have made them sane!
Book IX Ch. 4, 8
Although it is outside the remit of this chapter, it is perhaps interesting to note a more
recent revival of aspects of this theology. In a fascinating article in Encounter, Jeremy
Ayers shows that John Wesley, the father of the Methodist Church, saw religion as
θεραπεια ψυχις, God’s method of healing a soul which is thus diseased.
Hereby, the great Physician of souls applies medicine to heal this sickness; to
restore human nature, totally corrupted in all its faculties.
42

39
Jeffrey P. Carpenter: An Orthodox Perspective on Illness and Healing, The Word 46 (2002): 4 (quoted
in Philip LeMasters (see below), p. 7)
40
ibid
41
Philip LeMasters: The Practice of Medicine as Theosis. In Theology Today, July 2004, p. 1
42
John Ayers: John Wesley’s therapeutic Understanding of Salvation. Encounter, Vol. 63, Number 3,
Summer 2002, Indianapolis, p. 273
Page 21 of 26

Incorporation/participation  
A third grouping of images that we encounter in the writings of the Fathers concerns
participation. We saw above (p. 2) that the liturgy as a whole can be seen as
participation in the triune life of God.
We shall examine two theologians in more depth, both of whom see incorporation and
participation effected by the Eucharist as the fulfilment of salvation.
In a fascinating article, Julie Canlis gives an account of Irenaeus’ theology from the
viewpoint of participation.
43
Irenaeus’ thought was forged in the struggle with
Gnosticism. His concern was more than speculative: he saw the controversy as a
struggle for the life of human beings.
Irenaeus was combating not simply false knowledge with true knowledge, but
rather knowledge with worship, speculation with eucharist … In Irenaeus’
eyes, [the] blasphemy [of the Gnostics] amounted to homicide, for it eliminated
the possibility of union with God…
44
The fundamental tenet of Iranaeus’ anthropology was, according Canlis, the contrast
between God the Creator and the human being, the creature. The creation was not a
static transformation from non-being into being, however much Iranaeus upheld the
creation ex nihilo.
Creation marks the beginning of an existence lived with God that is not static
but dynamic, propelled onward towards greater and greater communion with
him.
45
This leads to his impressive anthropology: although distinct from God as his creatures:
our creaturehood is not creaturehood in truth without full participation in
God’s life.
46
The loss of this participation threatens us with non-existence:
We are those whose humanness depends on communion: ‘lest man, falling
away from God altogether, should cease to exist.’
47
The solution to the condition of illusory independent being of the creatures lies in the
Incarnation, which is the beginning of the process of mutual penetration of Creator
and creature:
the First-begotten Word, should descend to the creature (facturam), that is, to
what had been moulded … that it should be contained by Him; and, on the
other hand, the creature should contain the Word, and ascend to Him, passing
beyond the angels, and be made after the image and likeness of God.
48

Canlis rightly points out that this mutual containing holds the key to Irenaeus’ theology
of participation:
In quite remarkable language, Irenaeus speaks of this as a mutual containing –
on that takes place in the person of the Word. Participation in God thus

43
Julie Canlis: Being made human: the significance of creation for Irenaeus’ doctrine of participation. .
In Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol. 58 No. 4, Edinburgh, 2005
44
ibid, p. 435
45
ibid, p. 447
46
ibid, p. 447
47
Against Heresies, IV 20.7 quoted ibid p. 448
48
Against Heresies, V 36.3 quoted ibid p. 452
Page 22 of 26

functions neither as a threat to our creatureliness, nor to the Creator’s divinity,
but rather is the very means by which the creation becomes itself. … God’s goal
for humanity is full participation in his communion, a progressive ‘koinonia of
the Spirit’ (2 Cor 13:14)
49
Canlis mentions that the experience that underlay this remarkable theology and
anthropology was ‘the reality in which [Irenaeus] lived, most obvious to him in the
Eucharist.’
50
However, the thrust of her article is the theology of participation, not the
Eucharist itself. She gives an excellent framework in which to place Irenaeus’
statements on the Eucharist.
The creaturely status of the natural human being is counterpointed against the natural
genesis of the elements in the Eucharist in terms that echo the mystery of the
containing and being contained referred to above.
So then, if the mixed cup and the manufactured bread receive the Word of
God and become the Eucharist, that is to say, the Blood and Body of Christ,
which fortify and build up the substance of our flesh, how can these people
claim that the flesh is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life, when it is
nourished by Christ’s Blood and Body and is His member? As the blessed
apostle says in his letter to the Ephesians, ‘For we are members of His Body,
of His flesh and of His bones’ (Eph. 5:30). He is not talking about some kind
of ‘spiritual’ and ‘invisible’ man, ‘for a spirit does not have flesh and bones’
(Lk. 24:39). No, he is talking of the organism possessed by a real human being,
composed of flesh and nerves and bones. It is this which is nourished by the
cup which is His Blood, and is fortified by the bread which is His Body. The
stem of the vine takes root in the earth and eventually bears fruit, and ‘the
grain of wheat falls into the earth’ (Jn. 12:24), dissolves, rises again, multiplied
by the all-containing Spirit of God, and finally after skilled processing, is put to
human use. These two then receive the Word of God and become the
Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ.
Five Books on the Unmasking and Refutation of the Falsely Named Gnosis,
Book 5:2, 2-3
The conclusion of this argument is reached when Iranaeus shows that the elements
transmit incorruptibility. The change is provisional, or more accurately proleptic—it is
the hope of the resurrection that gives rise to the incorruptibility.
For just as the bread which comes from the earth, having received the
invocation of God, is no longer ordinary bread, but the Eucharist, consisting
of two realities, earthly and heavenly, so our bodies, having received the
Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, because they have the hope of the
resurrection.
Five Books on the Unmasking and Refutation of the Falsely named Gnosis.
Book 4:18 4-5
The Eucharist is the instrument for continuing the restoration or “promotion” of
human beings to their intended state. Although Canlis’ thesis is that Iranaeus wishes to
uphold an ultimate creator/creature divide against what she posits as an underlying
monism in his Gnostic opponents, it seems to me that the train of thought which she

49
ibid, pp. 452-3
50
ibid, p. 454
Page 23 of 26

so ably develops out of his writing suggests much more that he wishes to uphold what
we have referred to as a ‘provisional dualism’ which is on its way to being dissolved.
As was mentioned above, it is Athanasius, the great interpreter of the Incarnation, who
makes explicit the link between receiving communion and salvation. In her article The
intimate connection between Christ and Christians in Athanasius, Carolyn Schneider describes
how Athanasius adapts the Middle Platonic conception of ‘participation’ or μετοχη to
explain the relationship between Christ and Christians. Instead of following the
Neoplatonic teaching from which he took the term, which understood participation to
mean the timeless contemplation of the Platonic Forms, Athanasius uses ‘the language
of bodily creation and kinship …to express the relationship’.
51
Through the
Incarnation,
the Word embodied a new humanity in Christ. The Holy Spirit enables
Christians to participate in Christ, becoming thereby part of a new humanity
and children of God.
52

The Fall effected a loss of the ability to contemplate God in his full reality. In as far as
human beings are λογιζεθαι—endowed with λογος—they realise the spark of
divinity that was implanted in them. Its evident obscuration is a function of sin.
Real humanity, for Athanasius, has something of the divine in it. It is when
people lose their realness and their humanity that they lose what is divine. But
this divine gift is always, and emphatically, seen as a gift.
53
It is impossible for human beings to redeem themselves, because of the thorough-
going grip that evil has upon them. It is ingrained in their constitution.
Even a virtuous life will not ensure it because evil exercises its destruction also
over the body, so that even the virtuous die.
54
Now Schneider takes us to the soteriological kernel of Athanasius’ thought, with its
direct bearing on the theology of the Eucharist. This is his theology of the Incarnation,
which is conventionally thought to represent Christ’s participation in humanity.
Schneider points out:
For Athanasius, there is no ‘humanity’ in which Jesus participates; rather, he is
humanity, in which we participate. … [Christ] defines humanity in a new way
so that it now participates in the Word internally, though we are still of a
created and graced nature…
55

This participation is something new:
Our connection to Christ, as Athanasius sees it, is unique, without parallel or
analogy, and thus difficult to understand.
56
She concludes that
Athanasius does not explain how physical bodies can participate in another
body; he just asserts it.
57

51
Carolyn Schneider: The intimate connection between Christ and Christians in Athanasius. Scottish
Journal of Theology, Vol. 58 Number 4. Edinburgh, 2005, p. 1
52
ibid, p. 1
53
ibid, p. 7
54
ibid, p. 8
55
ibid, pp. 10-11
56
ibid, pp. 11-12
Page 24 of 26

Here, we can carry her cogently argued case on a step, using a passage we examined
above:
For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word
of God entered our world. ... taking a body like our own, because all our
bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to
death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. …This He did that He might
turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make
them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of
His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly
as straw from fire.
De Incarnatione § 8
For Athanasius, it is the participation in Christ’s body in the Eucharist which allows
human beings to participate in the full reality of Christ’s heavenly body, which is in
turn the restored and future humanity.
The Form of the old humanity, which ceased to reflect the Form of the source
of all Form, has been made over and recovered from death. Those who do not
participate in the new humanity, therefore, are still dying. Christians die too,
but for them death is the opportunity for the new humanity, of which they are
already a part, to achieve its victory over death in resurrection.
58
The theory of participation adds a metaphysical dimension to the understanding of the
Eucharist, which becomes the locus of the meeting, mediation and fusing of the
creaturely and divine worlds, which we encounter as divided. Beyond the personal
nourishment and healing encountered in the images of food and medicine, the theory
of participation leads to an appreciation that receiving the Eucharist is not just of
benefit for the individual communicant but blazes a trail for the recreation of
humanity.
Conclusion 
We have seen in this chapter that the church Fathers shared a conception of an
objective efficacy of the Eucharist. This was anchored in their theories of salvation,
and underpinned by their experience of Eucharist. We have shown that there was
nothing mechanical about their understanding, governed as it was by the experience of
encounter, and that it did not exemplify the kind of works-righteousness rightly
rejected in the Reformation. We have traced briefly some of the background of
thought and praxis in the religious surroundings; and we have seen the innovations in
praxis and understanding that the Christian church made. We have seen that these
developments were in line with the experience and understanding of salvation by Jesus
Christ, which reintroduces human beings to communion with the divine communion
of the Trinity. We have seen in a number of places how the world of the Fathers’
thought and experience challenges the thinking of contemporary theologians.
This chapter was not written with a religious agenda. However, the material makes
abundantly clear that the Fathers’ conception of the Eucharist is of more than merely
intellectual interest. Their appreciation of its efficacy was of a piece with an
understanding of the Triune God in his relation to the world, which tends towards
incarnation. If it is indeed so that this is a more adequate explanation of God and the

57
ibid, p. 12
58
ibid, p. 12
Page 25 of 26

world, the recovery of a truly realistic conception of the Eucharist, and the cultivation
of a praxis that fosters such a conception, is an urgent necessity. Only by doing this
can we participate in the divine life in the way that God has put before us. As
Schmeman says:
The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic
world.
59
… Man was to be the priest of a eucharist, offering the world to God,
and in this offering he was to receive the gift of life. … When we see the
world as an end in itself, everything becomes itself a value and consequently
loses all value, because only in God is found the meaning (value) of everything,
and the world is meaningful only when it is the ‘sacrament’ of God’s
presence.
60
The Twentieth Century witnessed in many churches, and in the foundation of a new
church in The Christian Community, something rather unexpected: a renewal of
interest and attention for the liturgy. We may see this as a sign of hope. Another sign
of hope of our time is that many areas of life which hitherto have seen themselves as
quite separate are beginning to join. Ecological activists from the 1970s on often saw
those who chose to worship instead of joining the demonstration or cleaning up the
river as indulgent and ineffective. Now an ecologist such as Alistair Mcintosh can
write:
In my experience it is not possible to engage fully with the world without a
growing understanding of spirituality. …We are, as Jesus said, all branches on
the vine of life; as St Paul says, ‘members of one another’ in the Body of
Christ.
61
As members of the body we are called to celebrate the Eucharist, in which is infolded
all hope of renewal of the earth and redemption of humanity.

59
Schmemann, Alexander: For the Life of the World, Crestwood, NY, 1987, p 18
60
ibid. p 17
61
Alastair Mcintosh: Soil and Soul – People versus corporate Power, London, 2004, p. 118
Page 26 of 26

Bibliography 
References to the Church Fathers are given in the text. Unless otherwise stated, they
are from the following editions:
ANF: The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, Ed. Philip Schaff. I have used the Internet 
edition at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/fathers.html 
NPNF: A Select Library Of The Nicene And Post‐Nicene Fathers Of The Christian Church, Ed. Philip 
Schaff. Internet edition as above.